


In the Morning, I'll Be New

by WhenasInSilks



Category: Avengers (Comics), Marvel, Marvel 616, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Begging, Canon Compliant, Dom Steve, Established Relationship, Friends With Benefits, Insecurity, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Missing Scene, Pining, Plot With Porn, Secrets, Smut, Steve POV, Steve could be bounded in a nutshell and count himself a king of infinite space, Sub Tony, hickmanvengers, pre-A29, were it not that he has bad dreams
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-19
Updated: 2019-02-19
Packaged: 2019-10-31 09:16:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17846651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhenasInSilks/pseuds/WhenasInSilks
Summary: “Please?” Tony’s voice is low and hoarse. It drags against Steve like the head of a match; a single puff of oxygen could turn that friction into flame.This is what it’s like, being with Tony. So many years spent wondering and here is the answer.It’s like being one breath away from burning.[A missing scene from Hickmanvengers.]





	In the Morning, I'll Be New

**Author's Note:**

> Just a note for anyone who hasn't read Hickmanvengers--this story contains no spoilers, but there's going to be a dimension that doesn't make a lot of sense to you (I guess you're in the same boat as Steve?). I know some people may well read it anyway, and more power to ya, but if you don't know The Thing that happens at the beginning of Hickman's New Avengers, I urge you not to look it up because it's Too Good To Spoil. If you want the relevant context, either before or after reading the story, go read Avengers Vol. 5 #1-3, followed by New Avengers Vol. 3 #1-3 -- if you like angst I PROMISE YOU WILL NOT BE DISAPPOINTED.
> 
> Thanks to kiyaar, whose comment that Steve's arc at the end of Hickmanvengers really only makes sense if he and Tony are fucking, together with the infamous blowie comment, laid the seeds for this story. An extra big special thanks to Sineala for betaing and to wynnesome for alphaing, betaing, brainstorming, cheerleading, and being generally marvelous.

“Beg,” Steve says.

Tony stares up at him. His dark hair is plastered to his forehead; his chest is heaving. His hands clutch the bars of the headboard, white-knuckled. Steve knows what it must be costing him to keep them there: the angle is awkward to begin with, and his palms must by now be slick with sweat. But he knows Tony won’t let go. Steve told him not to, and Tony has never disappointed him yet. Not here. Not in this.

“I—” Tony stammers, “I—” His eyes are bright and alert and all the more desperate for it.

Steve rolls his hips, grinding his ass along Tony’s leaking cock. He can feel Tony’s pre-come, cool and sticky against his balls; when he pulls up, a thin, viscous line rises with him. Tony’s gaze falls between them, fixing on that obscene cord of connection.

“Look at me,” Steve orders and Tony jerks his gaze upwards.

Steve feels a low frisson of pleasure. Tony is so good for him, so anxious to obey. But there’s a certain resistance that must be overcome first. Like Tony has erected a barrier in his mind between himself and what he wants—what they both want.

It was different back when they started, in those bright and reckless days after the breakout at the Raft, with a new team called together as if by providence, and all of them living under one roof, and the future a wide, uncharted map—a field of limitless possibilities. (Of course, it hadn’t been. Registration was already making waves on Capitol Hill, and Bob was unstable, and Jess was a Skrull, and everything was a house of cards just waiting for the first puff of wind, but it hadn’t _felt_ like that.)

The way Tony used to go under… It’s like nothing Steve has seen, before or since.

_“It scares me, a little,” Tony confided once. “I just sink and sink. I worry I’ll lose myself. That one day I’ll go down so far I won’t be able to find my way back up.”_

_“I’m right here,” Steve said. “I won’t let you lose yourself and I won’t let you drown, not ever,” and Tony smiled and said, “I know.”_

That was then.

Tony doesn’t go down like that anymore, doesn’t go all the way and sure as hell doesn’t go easy.

_“It’s not going to be like before,” Tony said. “I’m not as young as I was,” as if age had anything to do with it, and maybe it did. Then, tone shading into something between pleading and resignation: “I need the extra help.”_

Steve never could resist him when he begged.

And truth be told, maybe this all started for Tony’s benefit but now… Sometimes Steve thinks there’s very little he wouldn’t do to have Tony like this, stretched out beneath him, staring up at Steve like Steve is the only thing he remembers how to see.

Anyway, it’s not like Steve has to force him under. Most of the time, all he has to do is apply a bit of steady pressure, and wait for Tony to crack.

There’s a wildness in Tony’s eyes now, pupils swollen so wide the black almost eclipses the blue. His jaw is clenched and quivering. He’s so close to the breaking point now, to the moment where all resistance fractures and Tony becomes Steve’s, entirely. Anticipation throbs in Steve’s skull, in his chest, in his groin. Just a minute longer…

A bead of sweat glides down Tony’s sternum. Steve reaches out and catches it on his finger. Raises the finger to his mouth and licks it clean. Smiles.

“Tony,” he says. Tony shudders. _Beautiful,_ Steve thinks, and edges his voice with steel. _“Beg.”_

 _“Please,”_ Tony says, like the word is being ripped right out of him. “Please, please, oh god, Steve.”

Steve rewards him with another dip, another slow, rocking grind. “Please _what_ _,_ Tony?”

“Oh god.” Tony worries his lower lip with his teeth until all the blood rushes to the surface, turning it a bright, bruised red. “What you want, Steve, just— _Fuck_ . Use me, take me, let me make you come, please, _please—”_

The floodgates have broken. Steve knows from experience that Tony will talk himself hoarse without intervention, so he swoops down and covers Tony’s mouth with his. Tony’s lips continue to work for half a beat longer, before his head goes limp as he sobs his relief against Steve’s lips. Steve licks into Tony’s mouth, tongue moving in broad, claiming strokes, marking his territory. This is mine, he tries to say without words, all of this is mine. You don’t have to worry anymore.

He pulls back to look at Tony’s face. Tony’s mouth is open and slack, jaw fixed where Steve had left it. His eyes are crinkled into slits; Steve sees the glimmer of a tear, buried beneath dark lashes.

A dreadful tenderness rises in him. “You’re gorgeous like this,” he breathes, and his voice is hoarse. “So good for me.” He dips down again, brushes a kiss across Tony’s nose.

The skin between Tony’s brows furrows. Relaxes into smoothness. Furrows again. Steve is losing him. Praise does that to Tony sometimes, these days. It used to be what he lived for.

He pulls back, reins in his tenderness. It’s not what Tony needs right now, and Steve wants, with a fierceness so keen it’s almost a need itself, to give Tony what he needs. Tony should never have to look elsewhere for something that Steve could give him. They’re partners now, again. That’s what partners means.

Anyway, it’s not like he doesn’t have enough practice by now at figuring out how to make Tony sweat.

He pulls back.

“I’m going to ride you now,” he says. His tone leaves no room for argument. “You won’t even think of coming before I tell you.”

Tony shakes his head. His eyes are open now; he looks dazed. The answering flare of heat in Steve’s gut is so much more than satisfaction.

He presses down on Tony’s lower lip with his thumb. Drags the finger downwards, painting the wetness of Tony’s mouth across his chin. Tony’s beard prickles and catches on Steve’s calluses.

A faint wind swells in Steve’s ears. To have Tony laid out like this before him, all the secrets of his body—its textures and its entrances—made open to Steve’s touch…

One of these nights he’ll spread Tony out and spend hours learning every crook and cranny of him, and never mind the endless series of projects and problems that inevitably arise to drag Tony—too soon, always too soon—from Steve’s bed. One of these nights—

But for now he’s made a promise, and one he intends to keep. With Tony beneath him like this, sweat-damp and shivering with want, how could he do otherwise?

Reaching behind himself, Steve grabs hold of the plug and begins to work it out of his body. It comes free with an audible, squelching pop. Tony’s breath hitches at the sound.

Steve reaches forward to place the plug on the bedside table, the long stretch of his body casting Tony’s into shadow. The sight of it clenches low and hot in his belly. He wants that in every conceivable way, Tony immersed in him, enwrapped and encircled and swallowed and kept and held. He pulls back, resettling himself so the crown of Tony’s cock is just brushing against his entrance.

“Ready?”

Tony gives a little gasp, his upper body twitching upwards off the bed, like a marionette whose strings have just been tugged. Like he’s chasing air and Steve’s the only thing he remembers how to breathe. Like he knows just as well as Steve where he belongs. Soundless, his lips spell out a plea.

Steve draws a breath of his own, and takes a moment to find himself through the fire blazing beneath his skin, the unruly pounding of his heart. Centers himself against the desperation in Tony’s eyes. Smiles a reassurance and takes Tony in hand.

Sinks down. Takes Tony inside him.

Lets the world fall away.

* * *

After—because there always is an after, because nothing lasts forever, no matter how fiercely you want it to—Steve stands in the doorway of the bathroom, washcloth in hand, skin cool and still tingling where he wiped away the traces of Tony’s spend.

He feels… off, a little. Unbalanced in some indefinable way, the way he sometimes does after the sex, these days. Tony would probably say it’s down to chemicals. Hormones and endorphins—basic, biological things and maybe he’s right. But Steve thinks maybe it’s also something particular about this space, about the nature of _after,_ the uncertainty of it, the way it lingers on the skin like a question.

_What is this?_

_What are you to me?_

He’s never yet managed to find a word that can contain them, who they are outside this room—friends, colleagues, leaders of men—and who they are within it. Funny how that never seemed to matter, the first time they were together. Before the war. Before deaths and resurrections and more wars, before before before…

Steve disposes of the soiled washcloth and wets another. Then, with no stalling left to do, he turns back towards the bedroom.

Tony is lying on the bed just where Steve left him, loose-limbed and boneless. Emptied out by pleasure. Only minutes before that had seemed like such an accomplishment.

Now doubt gnaws at him.  He knew Tony would come to him tonight. It’s been a strange, ugly day—a strange, ugly fight, and really, it’s only natural, to want a distraction, to seek refuge in someone else’s body. It’s never bothered him to share that with Tony. Not as long as it _is_ something shared.

He’s always been so happy to help take Tony out of himself, to be useful in that way, to be _needed ._ Except here he is, cold and alone in the ashes of the afterglow, and there Tony is before him, awake but absent—inaccessible—and if that’s what Tony needs, if that’s what Tony really _wants ,_ to go somewhere Steve can’t follow…

What if that’s what this is to him? Not a refuge, but an escape? (And Steve not a partner at all but an instrument, a patsy, a—)

A sigh from the bed recalls his thoughts. Across the room, Tony’s fingers twitch, skimming across the empty expanse of mattress beside him. His brows crease. One eye cracks open.

Steve gives his head a little shake instead. Just chemicals, he reminds himself.

Tony blinks and lifts his head, scanning the room. At the sight of Steve, he begins to struggle into a seated position.

“As you were,” Steve says, and flushes a little. You can take a man out of the Army…

Tony relaxes against the pillows. “Yessir.”

Steve makes a valiant effort to hold back a smile. “Show some respect,” he says, advancing across the room, washcloth brandished sternly in hand.

“I thought that’s what I was doing,” Tony murmurs. “Mmm,” he adds, as Steve begins to wipe him down.

“Mmm?”

“Feels nice.” Tony looks at him through half-lidded eyes, contented as a cat. Steve wants to keep him like this, in this place, in this moment.

“Turn towards me,” he says, and Tony rolls onto his side. The ease of it—he commands, Tony obeys—catches in his throat.

He finishes cleaning Tony, lobs the washcloth across the room and into the bathroom sink—“Show-off,” Tony accuses, without heat—and slips back into bed. He leans over and brushes a kiss against Tony’s lips, suddenly and inexplicably aware of the pounding of his own heart. Tony hums again, a vaguely pleased sound, but makes no effort to participate. It could be indolence. It could be the lingering effects of subspace. It could be something else entirely. With Tony it’s so difficult to tell.

He resists the urge to tug Tony closer and lies back. It’s enough, for now, to lie beside him. Enough to have him near, after all this time.

They’ve been sleeping together for months, and even now Steve barely understands how it all came about. Oh, he understands the bare mechanics of it— _the knock at the door, Tony standing in the hallway, “Can I come in?” and not a word more, not a word spoken as he gently drove Steve backwards across the room, as he pushed Steve down onto the bed and, heedless of Steve’s questioning—“Tony, what the hell?”—sank to his knees._ What he doesn’t understand is _why?_ Why then, why… _like that_ , of all the ways to restart this thing between them?

Sometimes he’s not even sure Tony did mean to restart it. He has no doubt, for one thing, that Tony would’ve slipped out of Steve’s room as silently as he’d arrived if Steve hadn’t reached out and caught him by the wrist.

(But surely Tony would’ve known Steve wouldn’t let him walk away, not after something like that, he must’ve known, must’ve meant for it all to fall out the way it did…)

 _“Tony. What_ was _that— this? What—”_

_A bare second’s hesitation. “It’s whatever you want it to be.”_

_A staggering array of possibilities. The mind reeled._

_Steve settled for drawing Tony closer, pulling him down onto his lap._

_“And if I want this?”_

_Tony smiled like a shrug, like it was easy, like it was nothing at all. “Anything you want,” he said, and that— That was practically a challenge, wasn’t it?_

_He twisted Tony’s arm around, pinning it behind him, forcing Tony to arch his back as he gasped and scrabbled for purchase. Steve’s ankles hooked easily around Tony’s legs, and his hand closed around Tony’s free arm, tugging him forward. Tony wouldn’t fall. Not unless Steve let him._

_Voice low, pitched to the gravelly timbre that once made Tony quiver and melt in his arms: “And if I want_ this?”

 _Tony’s eyes were black and fathomless as Steve licked the answer from his lips._ “Anything.”

_(A third question hovered on the tip of Steve’s tongue. “And if I want you to be mine?” But it had seemed so weighty and the moment so fragile. The question, Steve decided, would keep.)_

_He awoke hours later to a strange, hungover feeling, an empty bed, and Tony beaming at him from the doorway, the light behind him bright enough to hurt Steve’s eyes. “Wake up, old man,” and that was another beginning._

_(He’d woken, too, to the fleeting remnants of fear, something formless—nameless—and that was yet another.)_

Steve drags himself out of his thoughts. He turns his attention to back to Tony, the sharp-angled sprawl of him. _This is what Tony Stark looks like in my bed._ The thought never ceases to dazzle.

Tony’s eyes are closed, and Steve takes the opportunity to study him, to fix the image more firmly in his head. He’ll remember anyway, of course. He remembers everything, since the serum. But some memories are… _more_ than others, and maybe if he concentrates, he can make this one of them. Memorize Tony by parts and then by whole. Start at the top, where Steve can still see the grooves his fingers carved through Tony’s product-thickened hair, and work his way all the way down to his jutting ankle bones, his dark-furred feet and preternaturally long toes.

_“Monkey feet,” Tony sighed, where he lay sprawled on another bed, in another time, smiling at Steve through the years. “You’ve discovered my secret shame,” and Steve laughed and rolled them both over—“I think Hank McCoy might have something to say about that,” he murmured against Tony’s lips, and then they weren’t talking at all but kissing, lazy and leisurely, like they had all the time in the world…_

Steve hauls his mind back to the present. Strange, the way the old memories seem to burn so brightly these days. His recollections of the past few months seem almost dull by comparison. Or… not dull, quite, but flat. Oddly depthless. Rose-tinted glasses, he supposes.

Glancing back up towards Tony’s face, he sees that Tony’s eyes are open. Tony is staring at the ceiling, a frown gathering between his brows. His mind already in motion, racing off to god-knows-where, and Steve left once more in his wake.

The thought stings, a little, but its bite is edged with fondness. Tony’s not _trying_ to leave him behind. He’s just… Tony. Tony Stark with his mind like lightning, brilliant and startling and dangerous and almost, _almost_ too fast to hold.

Because maybe Steve’s never figured out how to catch lightning in a bottle, but he’s had years enough with Tony to learn how to ground him.

He rolls onto his side and lays a hand on Tony’s shoulder.

“Hey. Where’d you go?”

“Hmm?” Tony looks over towards Steve and smiles. The rise of his cheeks and the crinkles around his eyes are almost enough to obscure the dark circles there. Tony’s been working too hard, Steve thinks. All of them have, but Tony more than most. Tony is _always_ working. “I’m right here. Where else would I be?”

Steve quirks a brow, reminding Tony that Steve is inured to his bullshit. They’ve known each other too long for those sorts of games to work. “Could’ve fooled me. I’d’ve sworn you were miles away.”

Tony rolls over to face him properly now, propping himself up on one elbow. “Steve,” he says, and the sex-roughened earnestness in his voice sends a pleasant shiver down Steve’s spine. “There is nowhere, in this universe or any other, I’d rather be.”

It’s not really a denial, but Steve lets it pass. “Sweet talker.”

Tony’s eyes crinkle again. There are laugh lines starting there, etched deeper with every year. They’re not the only lines on Tony’s face, but they’re by far Steve’s favorite. “Well. I do have a reputation to uphold.” He shifts his weight and starts to lean in.

Steve claps a hand down on his shoulder, pinning him in place. Tony’s eyes flare wide and startled; the smile falters on his face.

Steve’s heart is pounding again, but he manages to keep his voice light. “You forgot the magic word.”

Tony blinks. Then the corners of his mouth go pinched, as if he’s trying not to laugh. “Oh,” he says. “Silly of me.” He clears his throat. “Captain Rogers, would you be so good, out of the infinite kindness of your heart—”

He cuts off abruptly as Steve gives his shoulder a warning squeeze.

“Like you mean it, Tony.”

He’s not quite sure where it comes from, this impulse to seize control. He doesn’t think of himself as a controlling man. But the way Tony is looking at him now…

That’s the answer. That’s why.

The third question rises once more in his mind and on his tongue. _And if I want you to be mine?_

 _Are you?_ _Could you be, will you, would you, Tony—_

Tony swallows.

“May I— uh. Can I kiss you?”

Steve holds his gaze and is secretly thrilled when the faintest flush of color enters Tony’s cheeks.

“Please?” Tony’s voice is low and hoarse. It drags against Steve like the head of a match; a single puff of oxygen could turn that friction into flame.

This is what it’s like, being with Tony. So many years spent wondering and here is the answer.

It’s like being one breath away from burning.

 _Are you mine?_ he thinks, but feels no urge to ask it aloud. In this moment, he knows the answer.

He leans back a little, baring the broad expanse of his chest, opening himself to Tony. He smiles his permission, and gestures to himself with a little flourish. _Here you go._

“I’ll allow it.” His voice rumbles in his chest.

This time when Tony leans in, it’s slow, not the slowness of hesitance, but of intent. All of that marvelous brain, all of that focus narrowed to a single point, with Steve as the object. It’s enough to take his breath away.

It’s (almost) enough to drive him out of his mind.

Tony’s lips part just as they meet Steve’s own. It’s barely even a kiss; Tony’s mouth just settles against his and stays there, like it’s found its resting place. Like it knows where it belongs.

With glacial slowness, Tony begins to move, lips pursing and parting, kissing their way around Steve’s mouth, across the upper lip and then down to the lower like he’s fulfilling some kind of sacred obligation, like he daren’t leave a millimeter of Steve’s lips unkissed. When he finds his way back to where he started he kisses Steve again, with just a touch more assertiveness, taking Steve’s lower lip between his two, his tongue darting out to trace its edge.

Someone’s breath catches. For the life of him, Steve couldn’t say whose it was.

“Generous,” Tony whispers, without lifting his mouth from Steve’s. It’s a moment before the fog clears enough from Steve’s brain for him to even remember what Tony is responding to. When he does a shiver goes through him. Tony didn’t sound like he was joking.

He brings a hand up to cradle Tony’s head, fingers burrowing through the short hair at the base of his skull. Tony sighs and Steve parts his lips to catch the breath.

Steve could deepen the kiss, if he wanted. Pull Tony close and take back control, mouth open and demanding. Turn these gentle ministrations into something hot and dark and heavy with passion, all tongue and lips and teeth. Tony would let him. Tony always lets him. Tony would _like_ it.

(He always does.)

Instead he lies there and lets Tony kiss him like he’s something to be cherished.

At last Tony pulls away, resting his forehead against Steve’s.

“I should go,” he says.

For a moment a refusal hovers on his lips. _I don’t remember giving you permission to leave_ _,_ he might say, or—the thought settling hot and tight at the base of his spine—something sterner, something to put Tony in his place, to remind him who he belongs to. _You’ll go when I say you can go,_ or even, _You’ll stay where I damn well put you._ Anything to keep him here, tucked away in Steve’s bedroom, where nothing exists in the world except the two of them.

For a moment he considers it, but only for a moment. He won’t spoil this, these precious, too rare moments where Tony is his, entirely.

He knows it’s a… a sex thing. And that’s good—right. The way it should be. Outside the bedroom they’re equals. Partners. Maybe not entirely in the way that Steve wants, but he’s working on that. One of these nights he’ll ask Tony out to dinner and Tony—Tony will say yes, he’s nearly sure of that.

But here, where Tony is already his—totally, unquestioningly, that’s… Well. That’s something different entirely.

So instead he smiles, to show Tony that he understands—which he does—and that he respects Tony’s autonomy—which he _does._

“Duty calls?”

Tony snorts and drags his hand through his hair. “No rest for the wicked.”

He isn’t looking at Steve when he speaks and the words come out oddly flat. Steve frowns, reaches out for him—he’s known Tony long enough to know that Tony’s mind isn’t always the pleasantest place to live.

But Tony smiles and turns back towards him and Steve lets himself relax.

“Seen my boxers?”

Wordlessly, Steve reaches past him and snags Tony’s underwear from where it’s draped over the headboard.

Tony’s face breaks into a grin, bright and happy and wide enough to make the dimples pop on his cheeks. It takes years from his face, and for a moment Steve is lost and confused, standing on the grounds of the Mansion for the first time while a dazzling matinee idol of a man smiles at him and spreads his arms wide and tells him _Welcome home._

“How’d that get there?”

“Beats me,” Steve says, which isn’t strictly true—he’s fairly certain he tossed them there himself—but he figures it’s worth the black mark of the lie on his ledger to be able to share that moment of genuine mirth.

Tony chuckles and pulls on the boxers. When he sits up, Steve notices that they sit lower on his hips than they used to. He doesn’t think it’s the cut.

“Did you have dinner?” he asks.

Tony startles and blinks at him. Plainly he’d already been lost in thought. Steve wrestles down a sudden, irrational resentment. _Pay attention when I’m talking to you_ _,_ he wants to snarl, because this is his room and Tony is his, Tony is _his_ _,_ doesn’t he know that?

“Dinner. Did you remember to eat it?” he repeats with a patience he doesn’t truly feel.

“Oh.” Tony blinks again. “Yeah, I— Yeah.”

“Really? An actual meal?”

Tony rolls his eyes. “Yes, mom, an actual meal.” He shifts around on the bed to look at Steve straight on. “You all right?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

He wishes it wasn’t a real question. Sometimes, with Tony, it’s the kind of happiness you read about in storybooks, the kind that it never really occurred to him to dream of but—

But that doesn’t explain how he feels those other times, like everything in his life has been built on shifting sand.

Tony shrugs. “Just a feeling. For such a straightforward guy you can be hard to read.” He darts a glance at Steve, quick and almost shy. “I just—” He swallows. “I just want you to be happy. Steve.”

 _And I just want you,_ Steve thinks, and flinches. That can’t be right. Can it?

 _I’m so afraid,_ he thinks, _of losing you._ Every morning he wakes up to the fear, a blue-white rheumatic ache set deep into the marrow. It ages him, makes him feel—for once—every one of his years. And then he sees Tony and Tony smiles and the fear is gone, for an hour, for an afternoon. Gone—until the next morning, when he wakes stiff-jointed and cold, with dread nesting in his bones.

 _I’m so afraid,_ he wants to say. _Why am I so afraid?_

He wants to ask it, but he doesn’t. It’s not Tony’s question to answer. How could it be?

“I was just thinking,” he says instead, and it’s not really a lie—he _was_ thinking it. “Those people we fought today—”

“The Evilvengers?” Tony supplies helpfully, adding, as Steve makes a face, “It doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, I’ll grant.”

“That Iron Man,” Steve ploughs on. “He said he killed you. Their you. When you were just a baby.”

A grimace. “Yeah, he was a charmer.”

“Which means you and I—or at least, that version of us—never met. And it doesn’t excuse it, of course, nothing could excuse it, but— I couldn’t help thinking, maybe if they had, that other me wouldn’t have turned out quite so…”

“Fascistic?”

Steve scowls.

Tony drums his fingers on his thigh, appearing to consider the question. “Maybe. I mean, it’s possible. But I doubt it. No doubt alternate-me would’ve grown up as rotten as the rest of them. Even their Jan was evil. What kind of messed up, bizarro world do you have to have to spit out an evil Jan?”

It’s a fair point. “Still,” Steve continues a little clumsily, “I— It got me thinking, is all. It’s better, when we’re together. Isn’t it? When it’s you and me, everything’s just… better.”

Steve doesn’t like to think of himself as a fragile man, but somehow, the minute he says that, it’s like his bones have turned to glass, and he’s waiting, waiting, and Tony isn’t _saying anything—_

But then Tony ducks his head and smiles and brushes his hand over Steve’s.

“No arguments from me,” he says, and gets to his feet. “Anyway. Time’s a-wasting.”

Steve leans back, relief trickling warm through his veins, and flaps a hand towards the door. “Go on then, Avenger. Save the world.”

Tony flashes him a smile. “I’ll do my best.”

Now he’s putting on the rest of his clothes—a damn shame, that—and crossing the room, and pulling open the door, and—

“Tony.”

The word slips out before Steve can stop it.

Tony pauses. The door is cracked and the light from the hall licks a bright, yellowish stripe down his farther side.

“Steve?”

There are words in his mouth and he wants to say them and he doesn’t want to say them, wants it with a fearful intensity and both ways at once, and that’s another thing it’s like, being with Tony.

It’s like being pulled apart.

“Don’t work too hard,” Steve says instead.

Tony lets out a breathy laugh. So much weariness in that one sound. “You know me too well. I’ll, uh. I’ll see you later. Tomorrow. Whichever.” Another little huff of laughter. And then, surely Steve isn’t imagining the tenderness in his voice: “Goodnight, Steve.”

“Night, Tony.”

The door gapes wide for a moment, and then shuts with a neat click.

Steve relaxes back against the mattress, and tilts his head back to look at the ceiling.

“I love you,” he whispers.

He’s been holding the words back for… weeks? Months? Sometimes he thinks it’s been years. Too much history between them, him and Tony, and he doesn’t know how to parse it, how to separate out the now and its desires—aching and knife-sharp by turns—from the then.

It’s not that he’s afraid of rejection. He’s almost sure that Tony loves him. It’s in his touch, in his smile, in the softness of his eyes.

It’s just… It’s so _good_ _,_ what they have. Tony’s the one always barreling headfirst towards the future, while Steve… Steve has learned how to value the present.

Is it so wrong, to want to keep this for just a little while longer?

He has Tony, and together they have the team and the future is limitless, and bright as they can make it.

Not tonight then. But soon.

The thought makes him smile. He’s still smiling as he drifts off to sleep.

When he wakes up the next morning, he remembers.

**Author's Note:**

> I think I started this for Kinktober (whichever day was “begging”), wrote 95% of it, decided I hated it and shelved it indefinitely. Then, a little while ago, I was digging through my unfinished fics and I found this and it was… fine? Idk what kind of artistic strop past-me was in, but anyway, I’m posting it now. Cool story, me. 
> 
> Thanks for reading! If you wanna freak out over Hickmanvengers, drop a comment or come find me on Discord or Dreamwidth!


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